


gender is optional, actually

by fourshoesfrank



Category: John Wick (Movies)
Genre: Agender Character, Canon Nonbinary Character, Canon Trans Character, Coming Out, Gen, gender is fake actually, pronoun changes, this is......catharsis, this was fueled by francesco gabbani’s music
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-05-20 14:46:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19378858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fourshoesfrank/pseuds/fourshoesfrank
Summary: “What are you?”“I’m an Adjudicator.”“No, what gender are you?”“I am an Adjudicator.”“No, what’s in your pants?”“Adjudication.”





	gender is optional, actually

Before they were born, they were an  _it_ . It was a fetus inside a uterus, nothing more. For nine months, it had no name except for “the baby” and it had no gender. Its parents wanted a surprise. 

It was only an  _it_   for its first minute outside the womb.  _It’s a girl!_

Her parents made the pronoun switch so quickly. She was given a name (for a girl), and brought home to a nursery that hadn’t yet been decorated for a  her . The walls were yellow (for an it) and there was not a speck of pink or blue to be found in the room (because her parents had been decorating for an  it ). 

She grew up thinking she was a girl. She didn’t even understand what that meant until she was eight. She’d always been under the impression that genders and choosing to have them was optional. She had no specific problem with being a girl at the time. She just needed some occasional time away from that part of herself. 

She had other parts, even at eight years old. She loved to draw on her skin to give herself tattoos. She practiced strutting in heels that were about ten sizes too big for her feet. She earned a reputation as the only kid who could snap a pencil in half in her first grade class. She tried to run away to Narnia when she forgot to clean her room. 

She didn’t have to be a girl to do any of those things, and when she was ten, she stopped. 

They asked for a shorter haircut, because they didn’t have to add to the lie of being a girl with their long hair anymore. They bragged to their classmates about being the only kid in the class who wasn’t a girl but was still allowed in the girl’s bathroom. That went over pretty well, considering the kind of kids they’d been bragging to. Mean kids, who still respected them for the pencils they could break but didn’t respect anything else about them. 

They got their head shaved after two long years of wheedling away at their mother, pointing out how much quicker it would be to shower and how much money would be saved on hairbrushes. They sat down in the barber’s chair at twelve years old, practically vibrating with excitement, and watched in the mirror as their refusal to be a girl was reinforced yet again. 

They breezed through all of elementary and middle school. High school was no different. They were smart, and they knew it. They had a good memory, and everyone else knew that. They could hold a grudge for a thousand years, and everyone knew it, so nobody who was sensible messed with them. 

That was a mistake. If somebody had messed them up, started a fight in the hallway and then later tried to pick up where they left off, it wouldn’t have bothered them. What bothered them was when their friends got messed up. They quickly found a way to stop that from happening as well. 

They were eighteen, they were a high school junior, they were standing in the principal’s office, and they were angry. They had memorized the entire rule book, the entire student handbook, and all relevant information contained in a municipal law book, to prepare for this. They were being accused of cheating on the ACT, the PSAT, and the IOWA tests, which was absurd. Not only had they been seated right next to the proctor’s desk during all the standardized tests of their high school career, they didn’t have to cheat to achieve acceptable scores. They said as much. 

The principal addressed them with the girl’s name they had been given at birth as he explained why their outstanding test scores were being declared invalid, and that they needed to schedule retakes as soon as possible. If they were lucky, they could still get into a good college. 

College could kiss their ass. They already had a job waiting for them as soon as they graduated, and it didn’t require a college degree or even a high school diploma. Just a drop of blood.

They graduated, with ‘work force’ next to their birth name on the paper that listed the colleges every member of their class was going to. Two people got into NYU. Most were attending small, no-name local universities to study car mechanics or accountancy or something equally boring. 

They became  an Adjudicator. They’d been involved in a few drug deals during high school, and had happened to meet one of their suppliers face to face one night. He explained the entire system to them before he handed over the stuff, because they’d asked him to. The dealer was almost as low as one could be in terms of the social ladder, but he’d gotten word around that there was a sixteen year old kid who had the stuff to be an Adjudicator. 

And now they were one. They would thank that man, if he wasn’t dead. A handoff gone wrong had done him in, but they didn’t know that, of course. 

Their distinct lack of a gender did not pose a problem. The High Table did not sink to gender discrimination when it came to choosing its own members, so naturally the same policy held true for the underlings. The Adjudicator was never so grateful as when they learned this. Finally, someplace they could relax and simply do their job, without the whole girl-gender-refusal-shaved head mess complicating things.

As the years piled up (seven of them, to be exact) they grew from being  _an_   Adjudicator to being  _the_   Adjudicator. Their friends called them Jude, to be funny, and they allowed it because they’d never gotten around to picking a new name for themself.

Jude was not discriminated against by the High Table or any of its operatives, true. They were still harassed by nameless hitmen when they drank at the Cleveland Continental’s bar, unfortunately. No doubt the presence of their breasts was what compelled the men to make such fools out of themselves.

 

 

-

 

 

One of those men is approaching Jude now. They take a long sip from their drink and school their features into something close to a neutral expression. 

“Hey, girl,” this nameless, unremarkable man hisses, sliding into the seat next to them. They scoot away, not wanting to give even the faintest impression that his presence is at all welcomed. 

“I’m not a girl,” they say. Even after more than a decade of saying that phrase and believing it, it still gives Jude a little thrill to hear those words pass their lips. They are not a she, not a he, not an it; they’re a they. 

“What are you, then?” The man’s breath is drifting close to their nose and it smells like he swallowed a liter of sewage and then vomited half of it back up. It smells terrible; Jude wants to leave but some sick fascination and the knowledge that they can’t be harmed in the Continental is keeping them from leaving the bar. 

“I’m an Adjudicator,” they tell him, like it wasn’t obvious from the distinctive briefcase they’ve got on the bar top next to their drink. Jude has discovered that when someone won’t leave the question of their gender alone, answering in this fashion will shut them up.

“No, sweetheart, what gender are you?” He’s asking the question in a voice that implies Jude is in the wrong. That is ridiculous, of course, and they are of half a mind to write this man up for disturbing the peace. 

“I am an Adjudicator,” Jude answers, employing their on-the-job voice this time. Usually, that sends them running, too worried about what rules they’ve broken to worry about scoring a body for the bed. 

“No, no; what’s in your pants?” the man asks with a sigh, obviously not deterred by the fact of Jude’s occupation. Perhaps he’s an outsider who mistook the Continental for a different establishment. That makes the game they’re playing even funnier. 

“Adjudication,” Jude replies, letting their expressionless mask fall and allowing themself to smirk at the man’s confusion. Reactions like his make the entire conversation worth it. And it doesn’t hurt that they’re  _the_   Adjudicator. 

**Author's Note:**

> hehe y’all should comment


End file.
